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Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.
(arstechnica.com)
DisplayPort4eva
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Valve tells Ars its “trying to unblock” limits caused by ~~open source driver~~ closed source corporate megalomania issues.
FTFthem. Open Source is not the problem here. The problem is the HDMI Forum being evil.
Surprised they didn't take the opportunity to push DisplayPort a little more.
the problem is although its a pc, valve wants it to sort of appeal to console users. and the problem is that the HDMI forum members are also TV manufacturers. they are very unlikely to ever support displayport.
as long as TVs are more popular than monitors, that trend of HDMI holding control will never cease.
Except there is no reason to ever put hdmi on the hardware. Displayport is superior to hdmi in every way, and when you need to step down to peasant land... a simple passive DP to hdmi cable/adapter will do the job. To even drive the point how shit hdmi is, you cant use a passive adapter from hdmi to dp, you'll need a very expensive active adapter to do it.
there is, HDMI Arc, which is why all the home theater companies do not want to weaken its hold.
Its a collaboration of tv manufacturers, home audio and the movie productions who want to keep HDMI propietary as fuck, to prevent piracy and to make their theater setup locked to themselves.
There is no technical reason DP doesnt have ARC. Its more of the industry is strangled by the HDMI forum. So you'll never find an AV receiver with DP... thus no reasons for vesa to waste bandwidth for a feature that the industry will never adopt.
hence, nothing will happen, unless monitors get more popular than TVs. because tvs are the majority bought display device period. The reason is because more people are willing to both spend more on tvs, and often are more willing to replace them, while people who use monitors hold onto them for extended periods of time. Thats why monitor tech is always a step behind both mobile and TV when it comes to the screen quality (e.g Monitors didn't get OLED till LG released its gen 2 WOLED, and Samsung decided to drop QDOLED gen 1, while phones of course had oled/amoled for a long time, and OLED tvs have existed for years before it touched hte monitor space)
Yes, theres no technial reason why display port CANT do it, but the problem is HDMI forum has the market. the market doesnt suddenly shift unless you give it a good reason to, which would basically require the VESA foundation producing a featureset so significantly better than HDMI, that it invalidates TVs to the consumer mind.
I think the reason you mention is a pretty good one.. who wants to solely rely on adapters?
They can just bundle them? It still be cheaper than paying for the licensing. What is the issue here?
I don't think it's the best user experience when you get a new product neither do I think they are foolproof.
I mean... if someone can't figure out which end goes where. Theres gonna struggle with a standard hdmi cable. I guess they could custom print big text on the cable ends to make it clear which end goes where. They'll certainly have the volume to make such customization.
I think it's more of the hassle side of things, added complexity (even if small) and it makes the product feel less refined/premium/sleek in my opinion (not something I care about personally, but the masses do and it adds some friction, even if little).
I may be wrong, maybe adapters have no issue with hdmi to DP, but in the past I have only heard of trouble with adapters just not working for some devices.
Dp to hdmi is very reliable. The siginals are near identical, the adapter is just a level shifter. Not much can go wrong. Issues arise when talking about either cheaply made (out of spec) or active adapters.
it makes the product feel less refined/premium/sleek in my opinion
Maybe for Apple users.
I'm a little disappointed, but not surprised. This thing is designed to be used in the living room hooked up to the TV, after all.
The fact of A/V consumer electronics standardizing on HDMI instead of DisplayPort is kinda not Valve's problem to solve, as much as I'd like it to try.
the HDMI Forum (which manages the official specifications for HDMI standards) has officially blocked any open source implementation of HDMI 2.1.
How, though? I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the law, but I know interoperability is one of the major sources of exceptions to copyright protection, and the whole Google vs Oracle saga would imply there's nothing illegal about making your own implementation of a standard without permission.
Copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret laws are all entirely different and have almost nothing to do with each other (don't be fooled by the property-rights-hating shysters who try to gaslight you into lumping them all as "intellectual property[sic]").
Trademarks and patents don't have the same kinds of interoperability exceptions that copyright does, and you can't claim to "support HDMI™" without licensing rights to those in addition to whatever copyrighted code you might need for the software side of the implementation.
And here are those companies making that decision
You only need to get down the list to broadcom before it becomes obvious this isn't going to change.
Assholes.
I'm glad more people are hearing how it's this group of standards assholes who are causing it.
Laughs in displayport
I really wish displayport on TVs would take off.
That's the idea
Wonder if they can ship a proprietary HDMI part of the driver or if there's going to be an unofficial 2.1 driver patch that can be installed down the line.
Greed.
Is it licensing fees? I bet it is.
Is it licensing fees? I bet it is.
From the article:
the HDMI Forum (which manages the official specifications for HDMI standards) has officially blocked any open source implementation of HDMI 2.1. That means the open source AMD drivers used by SteamOS can’t fully implement certain features that are specific to the updated output standard.
Man, I fucking hate HDMI.